The collision of archaeology, cycling, and aortic valve repair

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Weigh Day Plus One

Got up this morning and weighed myself on day number two. Brace yourself because I am sure you will be as surprised as I am. All of my hard work (yesterday) truly paid off—the exercise, the will power, the hunger. Since yesterday—wait for it—I actually gained .2 lbs! On top of that, I am still obese. What is up with that? I did what the Mayo Clinic said to do. I embraced healthy eating as my sentence for life, I mean lifestyle, and I even ate several pieces of fruit! I ate healthy chips made of great things like beats and taro. I skipped lunch and had a lumpy, dusty soy protein shake. At the Chinese restaurant my wife and I went to (sans kids for the first time of 20 years) I just ate soup…oh yeah and four big, fat spare ribs dripping with what I am sure was a healthy sauce. I exercised! I punished myself up and down those brutal hills in my subdivision for more than 30 minutes. What does a guy have to do to lose 30 lbs here? I mean, RadioShack almost got their first win last night. They are plowing ahead toward achieving their goals and I’m going backwards! I guess this is going to be harder than I thought. I shouldn’t order the bibs and jersey just yet…and no need to shave my legs, buy the Livestrong helmet or tell my mom I am now a cyclist. I guess I’ll just pull myself up by my bootstraps, own my journey, buckle down, and redouble my efforts.

Today is going to be a hard day. Our friend who passed away on Saturday is being buried this afternoon. We have to load the kids in the van and drive about 3 hours to a green cemetery in northern South Carolina. The green cemetery goes with the cardboard casket that we decorated a couple of days ago. We’ll do our usual community thing and have a pot luck at the cemetery. Painting the casket was a really positive thing and it made me feel a lot more at peace about our friend. Did I tell you about the rainbow? We were at a friend’s house on the lake the other day to decorate the casket. Before we started someone spotted a rainbow across the lake in the clouds. Soon it turned into two rainbows and then the reflection of the larger one traveled all the way from the horizon to our side of the lake and right up to the shore. It was a rainbow path that lead from where we were into the sky. If that wasn’t our friend telling us she was OK, then I am not alive. The most incredible sight was seeing her husband and daughter standing at the end of that path together. Some Native Americans here in the East believe that the rainbow is the pathway that souls follow after they die. I don’t think I need to say anything more, but just writing this gets my eyes watery and gives me chills. Life is pretty amazing if you let yourself feel it. I am not always very good at feeling it. Somehow writing about it forces me to do it. So this is good. Today will be good and hard.

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